Misconceptions Series:Email Follies, Part 5

In addition to a new page dealing with the notion that
Joan was trained in Scotland
by remnants of the Knights Templar, we again have a
page addressing the many tired arguments of one Kenneth Walsh, who has
now been removed entirely from the IJAS discussion list for misbehavior.
It is to be hoped that he'll finally move on with his life and
stop bothering the Joan of Arc community; but either
way, the rest of us are committed to ignoring him from now on.
Here then is an examination of some of
his many unusual views before moving on to more important concerns:

The above is hopelessly muddled, and will have to be patiently
disentangled piece by piece: Firstly, the reference to a quote from Aquinas
given by Allen Williamson
refers to something Kenneth
saw in an article on the Joan of Arc Archive site, and anyone who wishes
to can look at the article in question and see that: a) it never uses
the word "conscience" at all (Kenneth added that himself) nor does it define the
theological issues as Kenneth has claimed above, nor have these Misconceptions
articles defined the issue as such - which brings us to the main point:
b) What all of these articles do say - as everyone else can confirm
for themselves - is that Aquinas
was simply stating the standard doctrine that people need to obey
the Divine Law - neither one's "conscience" nor any individual
clergyman or group of clergy.
Kenneth has deliberately misquoted and distorted this principle time and again,
then tried to claim that both Joan and Aquinas were embracing "heretical"
views. Additionally, it should
hardly need to be noted that, far from being considered
"suspect" as Kenneth claims, St. Thomas Aquinas was hailed by the
15th century Church as "the Holy Teacher" precisely because the Church
embraced his doctrines as part of the bedrock foundation
of its official dogma - meaning that Kenneth is trying to
argue that the Church supposedly never
accepted the very writings which it taught as required reading for
its clergy. Finally, since Joan was only defying a small group of
clergy who themselves were acting
contrary to the Church's accepted doctrines (as covered before in
previous articles), her actions can hardly be declared "heretical"
regardless of how the issue is perceived, and it's particularly
ridiculous to claim that she was a "heretic" for obeying the "Summa
Theologica" itself. All of this has
been explained ad nauseam to Kenneth numerous times before, but it
never penetrates.
Again, this is a good illustration of why so many others - such as Robert Wirth of the IJAS, Dr. Ansgar Kelly,
and so forth - have refused to try to reason with
him any further; and the chief reason why this series will now move on
to debunking other, more important - and in some cases more rational -
misconceptions.